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BT Sues Google Over Android
phonewebcam writes "British Telecom is claiming billions of dollars of damages from Google in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. which says that the Android mobile operating system infringes a number of the telecoms company's key patents. The lawsuit, filed in the state of Delaware in the U.S., relates to six patents which BT says are infringed by the Google Maps, Google Music, location-based advertising and Android Market products on Android. If successful, the suit could mean that Google or mobile handset makers will have to pay BT royalties on each Android handset in use and which they produce."
Here's my poor non-lawyer summary of the patents for those too lazy to look them up.
Busioc granted in 2000 seems to be a troll patent on anything that reacts to detected network characteristics. TCP window size control since the 80s seems to be prior art, although anycast root DNS servers from the 90s would appear to be a close second.
Mannings1 granted in 1994 seems to be a troll patent on anything navigational that relies on a base and mobile part. Like LORAN from the 60s, or any of the moon shots from the 60s where the capsule relied on the IBM 7094 mainframe to run the calcs back home.
Titmuss1 granted in 2002 seems to be a troll patent where the the contents of a list depend on the location of the user. Like my Garmin GPS-12XL "nearest waypoint list" from the 90s, or any brick and mortar website with a "find the closest store" functionality.
Gittins granted 2003 seems to be a troll patent where you have a database server accessed over the network that has user based permissions. Like any mysql installation. It seems to be a pretty good description of the DB2 IBM mainframe server I was tangentially involved with about 20 years ago (%^&# source route bridging SDLC by mac addresses still gives me nightmares)
Mannings2 granted 2003 seems to be a troll patent where you have a Mannings1 system plus the result depends on the type of vehicle. Apparently providing different "walk" vs "drive" route results is safe because my shoes are not a vehicle, but providing "car" vs "boat" results would be a direct violation of this patent.
Titmuss2 granted 2004 seems to be a troll patent where a distributed architecture and network is used to store location information. Basically, any computing infrastructure storing location information that does not have an obvious single point of failure; The CLR/DLR circuit layout system from my previous telecom employer would seem to be a pretty good example of an infringing product; of course that was from the 1980s, and Ma Bell had much older networked location aware systems. Remember ma bell's weird V+H coordinate system? I do.
I believe this is a pretty accurate non-lawyer summary of the patents involved.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
U.S. Patent No. 6151309
Claims
What is claimed is:
1. A service provision system for use with a communications network to provide a plurality of services to a network user, wherein data relevant to the plurality of services can be made available to the user dependent upon the location of the user within the network, and the user can select one or more services to be provided, said system including
control means comprising a plurality of software agents, individual agents of said plurality comprising data relevant to service provision the network,
updating means for updating data held by at least some of said software agents on a point-by-point continuous basis as the user changes location within the network,
the control means maintaining and communicating the updated data made available to the user and responsive to selection of a service by the user to trigger a process for providing the selected service to the user.
2. A system according to claim 1 wherein said communications network comprises at least in part a mobile communications network and the user has access to said mobile network.
3. A system according to claim 2 wherein the control means is responsive to transfer of the user between cells of the mobile network, said cells having different resources to offer in respect of services to the user, to update data made available to the user which is affected by said transfer.
4. A system according to claim 3 wherein at least one of the services potentially available to the user is affected by bandwidth availability in the cell in which the user has access to the mobile network, and the control means may update the data available to the user in terms of either availability of such service or the price at which it would be available.
5. A system according to either of claim 3 or 4 wherein at least one of the services potentially available to the user involves the downloading of data to the user, which downloading is affected by bandwidth availability in cells of the mobile network, said system further comprising means to store data requested by the user as a consequence of selecting a service, the control means controlling downloading of said data to the user such that it is stored at times that bandwidth is not available for said downloading, and downloaded subsequently when bandwidth becomes available.
6. A system according to claim 5 wherein the control means includes means for tracking the location of the user with respect to the mobile network for the purpose of downloading the data to the user by means of appropriate routing through the communications network or networks.
7. A system according to claim 1 wherein the data relevant to the plurality of services includes real-time pricing data such that the user can take the real-time pricing data into account prior to selecting a service.
8. A system according to claim 1 wherein:
a plurality of said individual agents are each allocated a facility for offering a common service,
each of said plurality of individual agents holding real-time data in respect of its allocated facility's capacity to offer the service, and
the system selects one of the allocated facilities on which to base notification to the user of current conditions under which a service might be provided.
9. A system according to claim 1 wherein at least one of said agents comprises means for storing an updatable business strategy, and the system accesses said business strategy prior to making cost-related service data available to a user, such that said business strategy can be applied to said cost-related service data to modify the data appropriately.
10. A service provision system for use with a communications network including a mobile communications sub-network to provide a plurality of services to a network user having access to the
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They can only sue where the patents are valid. If it's US patents - they have to sue in the US.
Britain har been much more restrictive in allowing software patents. So I doubt they got british patent
for those 'inventions'.
Just saying it like it are.
Carmack posted a better message about software patents right here on /. : http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=151312&cid=12701745
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As a BT employee at the time - they where on very shaky ground on this one. - The claim was based off of some arcane functionality used in PRESTEL ( a video text system) and totally ignored the prior art from 1947/48 Vadavar Bushes description of memex was a far better description of a hyper link.
Internally all the techies thought this was a stupid idea.
I used to work for PRESTEL and had not come across this supposed hyperlink functionality.